Friday, March 13, 2009

Wolff Fallout: Will "distraught" BJ Bailey still come to BU?

I don't write much about recruiting, but I do know that BU had signed a nice 6'4" guard out of New Jersey for next year by the name of BJ Bailey. Kid can light it up, leading his team to the South Jersey finals with 17.6 ppg. But now that the man who signed him has been fired (the same day as his HS career ended), BJ is reportedly "distraught" and rethinking his options:

"B.J. was pretty distraught (Wednesday night)," Gillespie said Thursday afternoon. "He was more or less wondering, 'What do I do.' We're just kind of evaluating things and seeing how it all shakes out."

Gillespie said the school has offered to allow Bailey out of his letter of intent, leaving him free to choose another college.

I couldn't find anything about Dan Munoz, our other announced signee, and his reaction to the Wolff firing.

Truthfully, I'm not optimistic. At this point, my first concern is keeping all of our current guys at BU. But Bailey was supposed to be a big part of our future as well, and losing him would hurt. If he decides to go elsewhere, the new coach will have almost no time to find new recruits for next year.

11 Comments:

If BU is giving the kid the option, that is the right thing to do, and something a lot of schools wouldn't do. They'd make the kid sit out a year if he didn't want to come.Chances are that the kid will/should sit tight, wait to see who the new coach is going to be, meet with the new coach, and then decide if he still wants to come to BU.The school hasn't changed, the location hasn't changed, the league hasn't changed (someday, hopefully), only the head coach and (hopefully) the style of play will have changed.Who knows, the recruits may be even more excited about coming to play.

He’s “Distraught”? For g-d sakes…a cancer patient is distraught ...not a high school basketball player who was awarded a scholarship to one of the finest universities in this country (setting aside any prejudices). At this point, all other decent D1 prospects have signed letters of intent elsewhere, so if he doesn’t want to be here we won’t have a top prospect freshman. Did BJ really become that attached to coach Wolff after a two hour meeting in his parent’s living room and a recruiting trip? Are we now supposed to second guess the long overdue firing of coach Wolff because some 18 year old is confused? Someone please call this kid and tell him take his thumb out of his mouth and to get out of the fetal position. . .the world is not coming to an end.

By posting this you are being disengenuous. I read an interview with BJ Bailey where he stated that he was coming to BU because of the terrific academics and business school in particular. He is an honor roll student. He stated he made his college choice (Boston University) because they excelled in both academics and athletics. He didn't make his decision because of Coach Wolff.

Give the kid some credit will you? You are portraying him as some whiner which he is not. BJ has character and will be sticking it out.

Brad, the point of blogs are to act as a news source or react to other news sources whenyou can't do the reporting yourself. Cut Tall-boy some slack - he's just reporting on what was reported and reacting to it. ESPN does it all the time.

Sensationalizes, Brad? Oh right, there wasn't enough news with the economy, Bernie Madoff and the Middle East so the press conjured up a quote from BJ Bailey's high school coach so they could sell newspapers.